Bad Baby

“I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good “I” who is going to improve the bad “me.” “I,” who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward “me,” and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently “I” will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make “me” behave so badly”

A theme I’ve been wrestling with lately is that of the “bad baby,” that I’ve had this persistent negative self-image since I was a little kid, which has led me to two places. One, I feel like I’m not good enough to do the things that I want to do, and two, I’m constantly working to improve myself.

I’ve been working to remove the idea of the “bad baby” from my thinking. I wasn’t a bad baby; I was an autistic baby, with different needs. There is nothing inherently bad about me. I’m just different.

A little louder for the back: There is nothing inherently bad about me.

Excerpt From: Alan Watts & Deepak Chopra. “The Wisdom of Insecurity.” Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011-11-16. Apple Books.